Lepidopt was suddenly dizzy, and he thought he knew why. Here it ends, he thought. Baruch Dayan Emet, Blessed is the Righteous Judge.
Civilians were screaming and running, and Lepidopt hoped they were running away from this area, not into it. He shook his head to clear it and shifted his bare feet on the asphalt, making himself scan the scene over the barrel of his gun.
Marrity was crouched over Daphne out in the middle of the pavement, and Charlotte was hurrying toward them from the left; Mishal was was running up to them too, from the right, and he was pointing a gun at them.
He can't let the Vespers have Daphne and her father both, Lepidopt realized. He's got to kill Daphne. Lepidopt remembered the Queen albums in the little girl's bedroom.
"Get hold of Daphne!" yelled an old woman from up in the tower belfry. "Don't let her get hurt!"
Mishal fired once, but he was running and the bullet struck beside Daphne's knee.
Charlotte paused, raised a revolver and yelled, "Mishal!" and when the old katsa glanced at her, she shot him in the face.
Lepidopt found that he was looking at Charlotte over the sights of his own gun, and even as his finger found the trigger, she had turned and pointed her own gun unerringly straight at him.
He lowered the barrel, perhaps simply too tired to shoot her— and then a shot from the portico beyond her clubbed him in the chest, and he rocked and knelt down, the gun spilling from his four-fingered right hand onto the pavement.
Louis, he thought — this disobedience has been for you.
Looking up from under his eyebrows, he saw Charlotte aim at the portico and fire several times at a wheelchair that jerked and jiggled under the impacts, and then she and Marrity were running this way, half-carrying and half-marching Daphne.
When they were still a couple of yards away, Charlotte jerked in evident surprise, then released Daphne's arm and reached over her to shove Marrity's head down, even as a bullet punched the pavement in front of him.
"Denis." Charlotte's breathless gasp was almost a sob.
She turned back toward the tower and aimed her revolver at the figure silhouetted up there in the western belfry arch.
For a moment neither she nor the figure in the tower moved.
Then they both fired at the same time, but though Charlotte remained standing while a ricochet spanged away next to her foot, the old woman flapped like a sail, then rolled over the cornice railing and drifted down through the slanted sunlight until she got tangled in the upper branches of one of the olive trees.
Lepidopt's sight was dimming, but he could see Malk crouching next to him. "Your other self caught it in that first exchange," Malk said. "I just pulled him inside the van. He's dying."
"I could tell," said Lepidopt. "So am I." He looked at his watch. "Fifteen seconds. Go."
"Right." Malk stood up.
Distantly he heard Charlotte call, "It wasn't me who shot you!"
Lepidopt managed a wave in acknowledgment before darkness took him.
Malk bellowed, "Bomb, everybody get back!" And then Marrity simply picked Daphne up in his arms and jogged after Charlotte and Malk to the florist's van, which was parked several spaces south of the van that was evidently about to explode.
He felt ready to vomit from tension and stark immediate memories, and he was anxious about Daphne, but every exertion was a physical pleasure; when Malk held the passenger door open, he bounded up into the van with Daphne still in his arms, and he stretched to step into the back of the van and lay her down on the carpet he and Charlotte had so recently lain on. His lungs pumped fresh air in and out, and his arms weren't fatigued from carrying Daphne, and he could still remember lying shattered and dying under the bloody olive tree, only moments ago.
Charlotte and Malk were in the front seats, and Malk had started the van and was backing out of the parking space.
"We went far up, didn't we, Dad?" said Daphne softly.
"Yes," he told her.
The van was gunning south through the parking lot, and Marrity put out a hand to brace himself on the floor.
"And we didn't come back down to exactly the same world, did we?"
The floor shivered under them as a jarring boom shook the air. The van kept speeding south through the lot.
"While we were up there," said Marrity, and he realized he was talking too loudly because of the ringing in his ears, "somebody changed the events under us," he finished more quietly.
They both jumped when something banged against the van roof, denting it, and a few moments later Malk made a left turn around a corner and braked to a halt.
"Out, all of you, now." His face was stiff in the rearview mirror, and his voice had the harshness of a man fighting back tears. "I've got to go back there before police get here."
Charlotte hopped out and took Daphne from Marrity.
"Go back why?" asked Marrity as he got out and closed the door.
Malk called, "To get your old body, mainly," and then the van sped off and made a left turn around the other side of the clinic building.
Charlotte and Daphne sat down on a curb, and after a dizzy moment Marrity let himself collapse beside Daphne. "We've got to get out of here," he said breathlessly.
He tried to focus his eyes on the sunlit palm trees and parked cars at this far south end of the parking lot.
"I—" he began, then cleared his throat. "I guess we walk to a gas station," he said. "Find a pay phone, call a taxi? Can't stay here." He looked at Daphne. "Can you walk, Daph? I can carry you. I could carry two girls your size."
"I can walk," said Daphne. "Slow."
The three of them got to their feet and began trudging across the asphalt. Where it ended they strode over a grassy hump to the sidewalk, and then slowly made their way east on Tacheva Way, in the opposite direction from Indian Canyon Drive. Marrity had to squint against the rising sun, but the breeze was still cool.
"Your old body," said Daphne.
"It's like the initials Moira and I carved in the Kaleidoscope Shed," Marrity told her. "I'll explain it when we, I don't know, get something to eat."
Sirens wailed from south to north behind them — lots of sirens, and under them the roar of big engines throttled wide open. None of the three looked back.
Then to Marrity's surprise his arms and legs were trembling, and he clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. He sat down on the sidewalk and then just huddled there, hugging himself and breathing deeply. He realized that he still had the gun he'd taken from the cat box, jabbing him painfully now behind his belt buckle. "S-sorry," he said. "I'm okay, just—"
Daphne and Charlotte were both crouched beside him.
"It's only delayed reaction," said Charlotte.
Daphne pushed his sweaty hair back from his forehead. "You've had — terrible things, Dad," she said, and Marrity was belatedly appalled to realize that she must have shared his experiences of killing and being killed.
Daphne might have sensed his sudden guilt, for she draped one arm over her father's shoulders and the other over Charlotte's.
Charlotte took off her sunglasses, and Marrity saw her eyes meet Daphne's when Daphne looked at her. "So have you, kid," Charlotte said.
"I only had a couple of bad times," said Daphne. "And like you said, Dad, none of them tried to hurt me." Marrity felt her shudder. "But then everybody killed everybody."